It's funny some of you old farts treat this place like some sort of golden chalice where everything you say is being keep away for future generations. This website is meant to sell guidebooks to mouth breathers getting into the sport, nothing more, nothing less.

It may have been meant to only sell guidebooks...but this virtual community has forced me to think more for myself than any other site I've been. I rarely post but over the years have studiously read very interesting ideas of current events. This site is MORE than just selling guidebooks. You very well know that. More than likely, that was not the intention...but the Taco is a wonderful place where censorship really jeopardizes its true value. CMac can do what he pleases but this campfire is bigger than all of us. The climbing porn is pretty sweet too!

I am not Ryan supporter. I think he is bat sh#t crazy and has been caught lying and stretching the truth on multiple occasions. I am about as much of a wacky liberal as you could find; however, I am having a hard time piling onto the 14er naysayer band wagon.

I lived in CO most of the 90ís. For a few years I was really into hiking and scrambling the 14ers. Even at that time I could not have told you how many I had climbed or how many repeats I had done. I just wanted to find cool routes and fun snow board descents. Now I would guess I have done close to 20, maybe up to half of the peaks. I did repeats on quite a few, either turned back before the summit, different routes, different seasons or with a different group that wanted to do a particular hike. I might be able to get a close tally if I had my guide books open, but probably not with just a list of peak names. I donít see it as unusual if someone could not remember the exact number of summits they had done over a much longer period going back to when they were fairly young. I donít think it is that extreme to think someone could rack up 30 peaks without a serious effort. Some of the hikes are pretty short, or the summits are close enough that you can tag 2 or 3 in a day. If you spent a week a summer in CO for 10 years and went for 2 long hikes per year you could get up quite a few mountains. Especially if you went for the trade routes on the easy peaks.

I am sure some on this site can remember how many routes in Yosemite they have done, and even move by move beta through a crux. I have completed climbs and gone to mark a comment in my guide book only to see I had done it a year or two before. These things just don't stick in my brain that well.

My gut tells me that Paul is exaggerating his numbers a bit, and trying to change his story now, but not every person who has hiked a 14er in CO can recount the exact total.

PS. I voted early for Obama yesterday. Hopefully be next weekend this really won't matter.

Some guy at the SuperTopo forum has a closer look at the peaks Ryan claimed to have mastered:

Ryan told me last week that Capitol and nearby Pyramid Peak (14,018 feet) are his favorite climbs so far.

This is an excerpt from the Denver Post opinion piece on Ryan that discussed his claim of climbing 40 Colorado fourteeners. (...)

Capitol Peak's famous "Knife Ridge", a solid but exposed third/fourth class ridge, is a negligible passage for an experienced rock climber, but would be formidable and very scary for a non-climber. When I climbed it with a very fit partner, but who had little rock climbing experience, I brought a nine mil rope and some nuts and belayed across it. I haven't done Pyramid, but Dawson's authoritative guide cautions about tricky route finding and extremely loose rock. The consensus is that Pyramid and Capitol are two of the most dangerous fourteeners, and this is especially true for novices.

Since the Romney/Ryan campaign has chosen to make his fourteener claims a central part of their campaign to win the state's electoral votes by portraying him as a Coloradan at heart and not really a "flatlander," some climbing fact checking is in order. With whom did he climb them? Was he guided on any of them (this would be prudent on Pyramid and Capitol for any novice)?.

So I just did a count of the peaks I could remember climbing from an internet list and got 16 peaks. Then I dug out an old guidebook and had 24 checked. I could not even remember where La Plata peaks was, but once I looked it up in my old Dawsonís guide I remembered that the Ellingwood ridge was about the scariest think I had ever done. I almost got run over by an elk doing the approach through the forest before sunrise.

With camera phones and digital images I would be surprised if someone summited today without a picture. Being a broke Boulder burner in the 90ís, I know that after paying to develop a few rolls of crappy mountain pictures that all looked the same I either forgot to pack a camera or didnít want the weight on a lot of the peaks. A lot of those pictures have probably been lost during moves by now.

Does every Yosemite climber have a picture from every route they climbed? Once I got a digital camera I probably do, but not when film and developing was expensive.

I don't think I've climbed more than about 14 of the 14ers, and would struggle to write down the whole list -- most were a long time ago.

But if a reporter asked me to talk about some of the best or worst, I'd be delighted start in. Wouldn't most of us? Ryan's unwillingness to give any details at all -- "read the transcript" -- strikes such a false note.

Have you climbed as many fourteeners as Paul Ryan?Ē a reporter asked Democratic Congressman Ed Perlmutter. The Golden Democrat said he has not

I suspect I have, but we'll never know. I'd be really surprised if he's run as many of them as I have.

But, as a non collector, like him, I dont have photos or records, of most of them.
But I do have on from the summit of my third (longs, keyhole up, cables down) when I was thirteen.

Edit: technical difficulties, I've posted the photo before here. I thought it was in the taco library. But it must be on photobucket, which I am searching, on and off on my phone. Will get it there eventually

hey there say, rick... thanks for sharing--very interesting to hear all the climber news on this...
you all have walked the walk--well--climbed the climbs, better said...learned a lot from all you all, as to the climbing world...

say, chiloe, as to this picture, GREAT picture, thanks for sharing...
:)

Update: I found the photo of my dad and I on top of longs, but photobucket is being pissy about letting me post it here . I did get it onto my phone And Facebook.
I think the Romney machine is behind it